"The Minimalists" On How To Declutter Your Home & Your Life

One of my favorite websites talks about two of my favorite podcasters on a topic that I love: minimalism.

The typical U.S. household has tripled in size over the past 50 years, now large enough to hold the 300,000 items the average family owns. Back in 2007, Joshua Fields Millburn was living out this norm, with a lucrative corporate job that afforded him luxuries like a nice car, a house with more toilets than people, and plenty of “stuff” to fill it with. He was epitomizing the American dream—until he realized it wasn’t his dream at all.

A bout of introspection after his marriage ended and his mother died in the same month left Millburn wondering when he’d become so consumed in this chase for more. More wealth, more possessions, more power.

“Those events forced me to question what had become my life’s focus. I realized I was so focused on so-called success and achievement, especially what achievement meant in our society, which was the accumulation of stuff, that I forsook the things that were most important,” he tells mindbodygreen. “I was fat, I was out of shape, I ignored the people who were closest to me, and I wasn’t really focused on what I wanted to do creatively. I wasn’t growing. I wasn’t contributing.”